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"WPCNS is a diverse group. Many, but not all, of our members live or work in West Philadelphia. Many, but not all, of us are parents. Our group comprises a wide range of ethnicities, first languages, income brackets, and educational backgrounds. We all share a vision of a neighborhood strengthened by its elementary school and an elementary school strengthened by its neighborhood. We are also brought together by our core belief that public education is a social justice issue.

Our founding members have spent many hours discussing the complexities of urban education, and we will spend many more continuing these discussions to ensure that social justice remains our goal. We want to be very explicit about the fact that that is NOT the intention of WPCNS to “fix” neighborhood schools by filling them with out-of-neighborhood kids. Rather, we want kids who live in the catchments for their neighborhood schools to walk to those schools. We want their parents to walk with them, to stay and volunteer, to chat with other parents on the schoolyard and with their neighbors on the way back home or to work.

For Lea Elementary, our current focus, those kids and parents are mostly African-American and mostly earning below area-average incomes*. If WPCNS manages to achieve all our hopes and dreams for Lea, most of its families will still be African-American and will still be working and lower-middle class. More of them will be walking to school. More of them will stay after school to participate in music, art, and journalism clubs. More of them will check out books from a fully stocked and staffed library. More parents will volunteer. More neighbors will know each other. But, they will be the same kids, the same parents, the same neighbors who live in the catchment now."